livestrong

The Live Strong Phenomenon - Those Little Yellow Wristbands

 "The Lance Armstrong Foundation believes that in your battle with cancer, knowledge is power and attitude is everything".

Jade Louie at Snoqualmie Summit, ca 1950

When my mom came down with cancer, there was no place to go for answers.

My mother was a beautiful and vivacious woman who bounced between tennis dates, PTA meetings, and the slopes at Crystal Mountain with unbridled energy. When, out of the blue, she began to complain of lethargy and dizziness, her family and friends were dumbfounded; she had always been the one to bite off more than anyone else could chew. When we read of Tenzing and Hillary's historic climb of Everest, hadn't she volunteered to build a scale model of the mountain the size of our dining room table? Out of CAKE? Wasn't she the bubbling star of the Taiwanese exhibit at the World's Fair, never mind that she spoke Cantonese rather than Mandarin? Hadn't she always talked her (and our) way into the really interesting places kids were never allowed to see, like the control tower at SeaTac?

A barrage of testing followed, and the diagnosis came back like a wind-driven cloud suddenly obscuring the sun: inoperable brain cancer. The chill from that shadow hung over our family for the next several years as my mother struggled to maintain a dignified existence in the face of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, culminating in a period of homecare administered by a volunteer cadre of her best friends over the final months of her life.

This was in the mid-70's, and reliable information about cancer and its treatment were spotty and hard to come by. Treatment was primitive relative to today, and we were left to scavenge bits of sometimes conflicting information from magazines, doctors and nurses. The uncertainty, and her inability to do something proactively to research and treat her disease sapped her spirit as much as the disease itself.

But that was nearly 30 years ago. Now, because a guy named Lance wanted to be something more than just a bike racer, to leave a legacy greater than the memory of 6 Tour wins, there is livestrong.org,  a kind of clearing house for cancer-related research, resources and general inspiration funded by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  It is a place to find hope, news of the latest in cancer treatment, stories by other cancer survivors, and more.

Maybe you already know. Perhaps you're already wearing one. They're those thin yellow rubbery bracelets on the wrists of almost every rider in the Tour de France peloton, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, virtually every Nike-sponsored athlete in the Athens Olympic Games, with the tiny letters "LIVESTRONG" molded into the surface. Just a fad? An endurance-jock fashion statement? More Nike PR hype?

The LIVESTRONG armbands are more than that - they've become the visual symbol of an immense and sincere public statement; an outpouring of solidarity with cancer survivors that transcends politics and fashion. Originally meant to raise 5 million dollars for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and its educational arm livestrong.org , the first batch was sold out before the end of the 2004 Tour. I received my bands from the second batch (reportedly 12 million), and that too has apparently sold out, as the bands are once again on backorder. Don't worry about it. Log on. Order 10 for yourself and your friends. Hey, order 100 and give them to total strangers. It's a cause. It's a movement. It's a spontaneous celebration of life, death, and the grey area in between. Millions upon millions of bike riders with yellow bands on their wrists, rolling down roads all over the world, just imagine . . .

Greg Louie

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